How does the novella represent the challenge of intimacy across cultures, species, or between individuals? What supports intimacy? What obstructs it?

How does the author use narrative perspective to help convey the relationship between personal memory and collective history? What effect does this have on the reading experience? On contemporary relationships to the history of the transatlantic slave trade?

How does the novella contrast the lives of surface dwellers with the aquatic society of the wajinru? What differences do you notice between the societies’ structure, purpose, and relationship to the rest of the Earth?